Context Effects in Social and Psychological Research PDF
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Context Effects in Social and Psychological Research Norbert Schwarz Seymour Sudman Editors Context Effects in Social and Psychological Research With 10 Illustrations Springer-Verlag New York Berlin Heidelberg London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest Norbert Schwarz Seymour Sudman Program Director Survey Research Laboratory ZUMA University ofillinois 6800 Mannheim Urbana, IL61801 Gennany USA Libm!'Y of COIIirtSs Cataloging-in-Publication Data Con~t effeclS in social and psychological ~b I Norben Schwan:, SeylIlOllr Sudman, editorll. p. em. PapcI1l from a conference on Cognition and survey ~h, held September 28--0ct0ber I, 1989 in Kill Devil Hills, N.C., sponsored by the Zentrum fUr Umfmgen, Methoden und Analysen, and by the Survey Research Laboratory and the Dept. of Business Administration, Universily of D1inois at Urbana-Champaign. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN·n, 978·1·4612·7695·1 ~ISBN ·13: 978·1·4612·2848·6 IJOE: 10.10071978·1·4612·28018·6 I. Social surveys-Psychological aspccts~Congresses. 2. Context effects (Ps)icoology)-congresses. 1. Schwan:, Norben, Dr. phil. n. Sudman, Seymour. m. Zentrum fUr Umfragen, Methoden und Analysen (Germany) IV. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Survey Research Laboratory. V. Universily of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign. Dept. of Business Administration. HN29.C64 1991 JOO'.72-<k20 91-31820 Printed on acid-f~ paper. © 1992 Springer-Verlag New York,lnc. Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 151 edilion 1992 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in pan without the wrilten permission of the publisher (Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 17S Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereaf leT developed is forbidden. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, eIC., in Ihis publication, even if the former are not especially idenlified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act. may accordingly be used freely by anyone. Camera-ready copy supplied by the authors. 9876H321 Acknowledgments The conference on which the present volume is based was supported by the Survey Research Laboratory and the Walter Stellner Memorial Fund of the Department of Business Administration, both of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, by the Zentrum fUr Umfragen, Methoden und Analysen, Mannheim, Germany, and by grant SWF 0044-6 from the Bundesminister fUr Forschung und Technologie of the Federal Republic of Germany to Norbert Schwarz. Bibb Latane and Deborah Richardson hosted the conference at the Nags Head Conference Center in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Their hospitality, the joys of southern cooking, and the outer banks of North Carolina greatly con tributed to an enjoyable and productive meeting. Special thanks are due to Mary A. Spaeth, who edited all contributions to this volume and turned a pile of manuscripts into a readable book. Finally, we thank all conference participants for lively and controversial discussions from breakfast to midnight and for the fine chapters that they contributed. Mannheim, Germany Norbert Schwarz Urbana, Illinois Seymour Sudman April 1991 Contents Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Contributors ......................... . xi PART I. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Chapter 1 Introduction Norbert Schwarz and Seymour Sudman . 3 Chapter 2 Context Effects: State of the Past/State of the Art Howard Schuman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 PART II. QUESTION-ORDER EFFECTS IN SURVEYS Chapter 3 "Order Effects" in Survey Research: Activation and Information Functions of Preceding Questions Fritz Strack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Chapter 4 Context Effects on Responses to Attitude Questions: Attitudes as Memory Structures Roger Tourangeau. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Chapter 5 Constructive Processes as a Source of Context Effects in Survey Research: Explorations in Self-Generated Validity lackM.Feldman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 viii Contents Chapter 6 Question-Order Effects and Brand Evaluations: The Moderating Role of Consumer Knowledge Barbara A. Bickart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Chapter 7 Basking and Brooding: The Motivating Effects of Filter Questions in Surveys Leonard L. Martin and Thomas F. Harlow . . . . . . . 81 Chapter 8 Serial Context Effects in Survey Interviews Dancker D. L. Doomen and Steven E. de Bie 97 Chapter 9 Questionnaire Context as a Source of Response Differences in Mail and Telephone Surveys John Tarnai and Don A. Dillman ............. . 115 Chapter 10 Context Effects as Substantive Data in Social Surveys Jook B. Billiet. Lina Waterplas. and Geert Loosveldt 131 Chapter 11 Qualitative Analysis of Question-Order and Context Effects: The Use of Think-Aloud Responses George F. Bishop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Chapter 12 Thoughts on the Nature of Context Effects Tom W. Smith .............. . 163 PART III. RESPONSE-ORDER EFFECTS IN SURVEYS Chapter 13 A Cognitive Model of Response-Order Effects in Survey Measurement Norbert Schwarz. Hans-J. Hippler. and Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. 187 Chapter 14 The Impact of Cognitive Sophistication and Attitude Importance on Response-Order and Question-Order Effects Jon A. Krosnick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Contents ix PART IV. ORDER EFFECTS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING Chapter 15 Order Effects within Personality Measures Eric S. Knowles, Michelle C. Coker, Deborah A. Cook, Steven R. Diercks, Mary E. Irwin, Edward J. Lundeen, John W. Neville, and Mark E. Sibicky. . . . . . . . . . 221 Chapter 16 Context Influences on the Meaning of Work Gerald R. Salancik and Julianne F. Brand. 237 Chapter 17 The Psychometrics of Order Effects Abigail T. Panter. Jeffrey S. Tanaka. and Tracy R. Wellens 249 PART V. SOCIAL JUDGMENT Chapter 18 Information-Processing Functions of Generic Knowledge Structures and Their Role in Context Effects in Social Judgment Galen V. Bodenhausen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Chapter 19 Context Effects and the Communicative Functions of Quantifiers: Implications for Their Use in Attitude Research Linda M. Moxey and Anthony J. Sanford . ........ . 279 Chapter 20 Cognitive Representation of Bipolar Survey Items Thomas M. Ostrom. Andrew L. Betz. and John J. Skowronski. 297 PART VI. SUMMARY Chapter 21 What Have We Learned? Norman M. Bradburn 315 References. . . . . . . 325 Contributors Chapter 1 Norbert Schwarz is Program Director at ZUMA, a social science methodology center in Mannheim, Germany, and "Privatdozent" of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg. He received degrees in Sociology (Dipl.-Soz., Dr. phil.) from the University of Mannheim and in Psychology (Dr. phil. habil.) from the University of Heidelberg. His research interests focus on human judgmental processes, in particular the interplay of affect and cog nition, and the application of social cognition research to survey method ology. He serves on the editorial boards of several social science journals, including Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Public Opin ion Quarterly. Seymour Sudman is Walter H. Stellner Distinguished Professor of Market ing, Professor of Business Administration and of Sociology, and Deputy Director and Research Professor at the Survey Research Laboratory, Uni versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Busi ness from the University of Chicago. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 14 books and over 100 articles dealing primarily with survey method ology and response effects in surveys. His current research interests are related to cognitive aspects of proxy reporting in surveys. Chapter 2 Howard Schuman is Program Director in the Institute for Social Research and Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan. He is also the current editor of Public Opinion Quarterly. His publications (with co-authors) include Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys: Experiments on Ques tion Form. Wording. and Context (1981), Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (1985), and "Generations and Collective Memo ries," American Sociological Review (1989). xii Contributors Chapter 3 Fritz Strack is Senior Researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholo gical Research, Munich, Germany. His research is primarily in the area of social cognition and social judgment Specifically, he is interested in the psychological processes underlying standardized situations. Chapter 4 Roger Tourangeau is Senior Scientist in the Washington, DC, office of NORC. He has a Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University and previ ously worked for 10 years in the Chicago office of NORC, where he served as a sampling statistician and conducted research on survey meth ods. He was one of the editors of the National Academy Press volume, Cognitive Aspects of Survey Methodology: Building a Bridge between Disciplines (1984). With Kenneth Rasinski, he co-authored a review of the literature on question-order effects that appeared in Psychological Bul letin (1988). Aside from his work on survey methodology, he has pub lished a number of papers on issues in cognitive psychology, particularly the comprehension of figurative language. Chapter 5 Jack M. Feldman is Professor of Psychology and Adjunct Professor of Man agement at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, specializing in social and indus triaVorganizational psychology. His professional interests are in the application of theory in social cognition to problems of human judgment and behavior, especially in organizational contexts. Recent research con cerns the role of constructive processes in judgment and behavior in many domains, including organizational and consumer decision making. Chapter 6 Barbara A. Bickart is Assistant Professor of Marketing and Director of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research Survey Program, University of Florida in Gainesville. She received her Ph.D. in Business Administra tion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research ex amines the effects of knowledge structure, memory, and contextual factors on the survey response process. Chapter 7 Leonard L. Martin is Associate Professor, Department of Psychology and Institute for Behavior Research, University of Georgia. He is currently finishing editing Construction of Social Judgment with Abraham Tesser. Thomas F. Harlow is a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, University of Georgia. Contributors xiii ChapterS Dancker D. L. Daamen is Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Leiden University, from which he received his degree (Drs.). His research interests and publications are in the areas of attitude formation, risk perception, and context effects in surveys. Steven E. de Bie is Deputy Research Director of the Netherlands Court of Audit. He received is degree (Drs.) in Economics from the University of Amsterdam. He has worked as a researcher at the Department of Data Theory, as head of the data collection department at the Social Research Center (Leiden University), and as coordinator of data collection at the Association of Social Research Institutes (Amsterdam). He is the author of books and articles on survey research methodology. Chapter 9 John Tarnai is Assistant Director of the Social and Economic Sciences Re search Center, Washington State University, from which he received a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology. His primary research interests are in computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI), survey measurement, and experimental designs. Don A. Dillman is Director of the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center and Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Rural Sociol ogy, Washington State University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Iowa State University. He is the author of Mail and Telephone Sur veys: The Total Design Method (1978) and approximately 100 other pub lications on telecommunications, rural society, and survey research methods. Chapter 10 Jaak B. Billiet is Professor in Sociological Methodology and in Data Proc essing, Department of Sociology, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology. His current research deals with re sponse effects in social surveys and with national surveys about xeno phobia and political attitudes in Belgium. Lina Waterplas was a former research assistant in the Department of Sociol ogy, Catholic University of Leuven, and is currently employed in a divi sion of the European Parliament, Luxembourg. Geert Loosveldt is Assistant Professor in Social Statistics and Senior Re search in the Department of Sociology, Catholic University of Leuven. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology. His current research deals with the analysis of interviewer-respondent interactions in social surveys.
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